Hybrid adaptive chassis control for vehicle lateral stability in the presence of uncertainty

To guarantee the safety of passengers in a wide range of driving situations, vehicle lateral stability should be achieved in the presence of nonlinear dynamics (consequence of critical maneuvers) and uncertainty (consequence of uncertain parameters). This paper designs a hybrid adaptive strategy to attain vehicle stability in these situations. The design is based on a piecewise affine (PWA) description of the vehicle model where partitions describe both the linear and the nonlinear regimes, and where parametric uncertainties are handled by estimators for the control gains that can adapt to different conditions acting on the system. Comparisons with strategies that merely exploits the linear region of the vehicle dynamics are provided for different driving conditions, and performance improvements of the proposed methodology are assessed.